Sunday, February 3, 2013

DAY 8) Unraveling Knots

Eternity has the figure eight on its side as a
symbol: 00. There are no mistakes, only lessons. And holding an actual prisoner
of war diary from 1943 yesterday, and seeing the hand writing, the exquisitely
detailed drawings, and knowing that it was the dreaded concentration camp tome
of Nancy’s husband Denys Sinclair, the person who actually played the
gramophone record while the 50 who had drawn the short straw went down into the
long escape tunnel of what was to become known as The Great Escape, filled me
with reverence for the past. We build all our lives on happenstances,
circumstances, chance, and choice.

These three a.m. sessions of my writing this Blog
pale so very much in comparison to what Nancy’s husband to be, and his best
friend, Nancy’s brother wrote while in the Stalag Luft 111 Gestapo
Kriegsgefangenenlager. Nancy has also several postcards they were allowed to
write, each of course highly censored. The past is as real as this moment of my
typing. And it finds its way based on what we do, as well as by what is done
unto us. I am up early because of jet lag. Yesterday was a 20 hour day. But I
gain sleep; the night before I was up at two. And it was my choice to come
here. And I am well fed and well quartered. There is no guard at the gate.

Because of this, that. Because Nancy’s twin brother,
Denys, drew a short straw he was one of the 50 to escape. And because he
escaped, like all the escaped prisoner of war pilots of Stalag Lufte 111, he
was caught, and he was shot. The verbatim transcript from a German officer,
stamped Top Secret, reveals Himmler to be the comptroller. Because of Himmler’s
decision despite much dissuasion, because of Himmler’s unyielding ardour to
provide example to all other Prisoner Of War would-be escapees, the famous 50
were shot. Famous? Who will still know their names? Who knew them, besides
family and friends, even then? Recently we’ve had children killed with a heroic
teacher trying to defend them from a crazed gunman. I cannot recall her name.
Do you?

Nancy's shock still could not bring to recall the year of the suicides. “I
think it was weeks, maybe months apart,” she told me last night, around 9:30
p.m. And her body subtly writhed with pain in the relating of a dreadful period
in her life when both her beloved sons, in their 30’s, took their own lives.
Ian was found hanging from a tree. His younger brother, a short while later,
out of great grief and inability to deal with what his brother had done, tied a
rope onto a balcony railing, and jumped over. Both left a wife, and both had
two children. Because of this, that. Then Nancy’s second eldest daughter,
Diana, just as recent as 2008, having contracted cancer, died. Contracted? As
if we bargain and sign and seal and deliver our lives? And yet, we do.

Choices. Denys Sinclair, the best friend made in the
concentration camp by Nancy’s twin brother, Denys Street, subsequently sought
out Nancy, and married her. And they had five children, and in 1959 they
immigrated to Australia. The confusion arises in names. A twin brother shot at
wartime, Denys Street. That brother’s best friend, Denys Sinclair, finding
Nancy and then marrying her. Add to that Nancy’s Belgian mother, Denise, and
clarification attends whomever we discuss. Linda, Diana, Ian, Fiona, Nick. Or
Arthur, Denise, Douglas, Denys. Nancy. Pat.

So too for much of life. Clarification becomes
paramount. Lest our mistakes are ones we pay for.